A Certain Chemistry (4 page)

It started in the kitchen. Sara had gone in there to get a drink, and I happened to be in there too, because I’d followed her. I made a fabulous joke (“Thirsty, then?”—which was quite funny, you see, because she was drinking a big glass of water), and after just the tiniest amount of mumbling nonsense from both of us, we’d suddenly begun to kiss. (My memory of it is that Sara moved on to me rather than the other way round, and that’s what will be recorded in history, as Sara herself can remember nothing whatsoever about the entire evening.) After some really quite excellent snogging, she suggested we go to her room. Once there, without a word, she began to remove her dress—one of the thin, vaguely hippieish, cotton affairs she favored. She grabbed it at the hem and pulled it right up over her head, turning it inside out in the process. She wasn’t at her most balanced and dextrous, and it caught under her nose; the dress was off her body but still concealed not only most of her head but also both her arms, which, raised up, were trapped inside. Trying to free herself, she swung and flapped the dress about—she looked vaguely like a huge, dancing cuttlefish. Finally, the edge of the neck hole pulling her face into the Phantom of the Opera, she managed to tug herself free, and she hurled the defeated garment across the room with a triumphant “You
fucker
!” She wasn’t wearing a bra—which at the very least saved us tens of minutes and quite possibly some kind of dislocation injury to her shoulders—so now she dropped backwards onto her bed and scrambled her knickers off in under half a dozen moves. So, there she was. Lying on the bed in front of me, completely naked.

Looking down at her, I knew that getting myself past the finish line in double-quick time really wasn’t going to be a problem at all.

The next morning wasn’t like one of those moments that those who’ve slept with
loads
more people than you have just can’t stop themselves from telling you about (they’re not bragging or anything, obviously—simply lamenting, oh-so-self-mockingly, how
awful
it is: “it
always
is”). Moments when you wake up with someone and you can’t remember their name or they’re a singer who’s at number four in the charts but you just hate their music really or they’re triplets or something. There was no terrible awkwardness or backtracking. I could now articulate whole phrases, just like a real person. (Unless it solved itself less dramatically by my becoming distracted by a different woman, my speech problem always cleared up after I’d had sex with the person for whom I had “a thing.” Funny, that.) Sara awoke perky and smiling.

“I don’t generally go to bed with men I barely know—even if they are regulars in the shop,” she said, chattily more than anything else.

I could see it was a casual remark and she didn’t seem to be suffering from any anxiety or anything, but I was keen to reassure her.

“Oh, God—
of course not,
” I replied. “I don’t think you’re a slag or anything. You were just really pissed.”

“Cheers,” she said, and with all potential misunderstandings now avoided, we thought about getting up and having some breakfast. I took a quick shower and, when I got out, Sara had already prepared porridge with tinned tomatoes and grapefruit. All in the same bowl. Obviously.

So, she’s always been like that with food—which, you’ll remember, was what I was telling you about.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” asked Sara, sitting on the end of the bed rubbing some kind of cream into her feet.

“I’ll probably go into M&C and badger Hugh some more—see if I can get any extra info out of him about this ‘big deal.’ Anyway, I think he likes me to drop in and keep him from his work. The more he works, the more books get published, and the number of books being published already depresses him terribly. Maybe I’ll have a word with Amy too. She went to some magazine bash today, so she might have scared up a little work. Why?”

“Och.” (I still found it hard to believe that I lived with someone who said “Och.”) “No reason . . . I just wondered whether you might remind Hugh about the video of the Dunkirk thing.”

She’d had Hugh (who had satellite TV, with its eight-hundred-plus channels of sport) record the cycling for her. And she was trying to be casual—a fatal mistake.

I toyed with her.

“The Dunkirk thing?” I asked, puzzled.

“Aye. Aye, you know . . .” She hurriedly finished off her feet, placed her watch on the bedside table, and wriggled under the duvet—all without meeting my eyes. “The Four Days of Dunkirk . . . the cycling.”

“Ohhh . . . the
cycling
?” I said. Handing my face over to a huge grin.

She finally turned to look at me and, my grin foremost, I leaned closer to her. She smacked me in the face with the pillow.

“Och, away with you, you fucker.”

It was Sara’s Secret Shame: she liked to watch cyclists. What was at the heart of it, the aspect that really took hold of her, I don’t know. Maybe it was those lycra shorts, perhaps the rhythmic breathing. It could well have been the taut, rolling buttocks thrust up and exposed to the chasing camera on demanding hill climbs. It might even have been an association dating back to when she was young—some frantic moment behind the bike sheds or one Scottish girl’s private discovery of how interestingly a well-placed saddle could translate the cobbled Edinburgh streets. I had simply no idea because, ludicrously, Sara denied that there
was
anything to it other than a sober interest in the complex and intriguing sport of bicycle racing.

“What?” I asked as the pillow fell away to reveal my face. I was surprise. I was innocence.

“You
know
what. I’d like to see the tape; the Four Days is an important event in the calendar, and a real indicator of form for—”

“Uh-huh.”

She hit me with the pillow again.

“Oh! Just ask him, will you?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling her over onto my chest, “I’ll ask him.”

She bit at me, gently. “Do you love me in more ways than there are stars in the sky?”

“Yeah . . . sure,” I replied. And, well,
I really did
.

three

“Fio . . . na!” I’d started to reach out and touch her arm somewhere in the middle there, and then thought better of it. “I’ve just come.”

She raised a single eyebrow about a quarter of a millimeter. It was devastating.

“I mean, I’ve, er, you know, just come . . . in . . . here . . . Just now. Walked in, through the door.” I mimed opening a door. “Haha. Yes. Anyway, I’ve come to see Hugh. That’s
’Hugh,’
of course, not
’H-you.’
Hahaha! . . . Yes. Well, suppose I’d better . . . better . . . you know . . . ‘Thyme and parsley wait for no man.’ Hahaha!” What
the fuck
was I talking about? “Yes . . . well . . . anyway. Better go and . . .
heeere
I go. Bye, then. Good to see you, anyway.”

“Tom.”

I started to walk over to Hugh’s desk. No, come on—let’s be honest—I started to do a
little dance
away towards Hugh’s office. I appeared to be suffering from an abrupt neurological impairment that had robbed me of the ability to process shame.

Hugh had a copy of the previous night’s
Evening News
spread out over his desk and was revolving an empty coffee cup endlessly round and round in his hands as he pored over it. Thus wholly preoccupied, he hadn’t noticed my approach and looked up only when I spoke.

“Oh, hi, Tom,” he replied, managing a weak, token curve in his lips. If some people’s smiles are supposed to be able to light up a room, then Hugh’s can dim one. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to see you, obviously. Who else would I have come to see?”

“I don’t—”

“There you go, then. What are you reading?”

“What? Oh, I’m just going through the obituaries.”

“Who are you looking for?”

“Well . . .
me,
really. ‘Male, died aged thirty-seven.’ I’m comparing myself with the general state of play. You know: trying to get an idea of the form. If I see one ‘died aged thirty-five,’ then I think, well, that’s pretty good. I’m not doing so badly—I’d have been dead for two years now, if I’d been that poor sod. That’s something to be thankful for.”

“
Do
you?”

“No. No, I don’t. I think, Christ—he died at thirty-five. I must be on an outrageous winning streak. It can’t go on; how can that kind of luck hold out for much longer?”

“Good point. I’d get Satan on the phone; you need to cut some kind of deal—
now
.”

“It’s like graveyards. You know when you’re in a graveyard? Browsing in some country church or hanging around at a wedding, say?”

“Yes.”

“And you start looking at the inscriptions on the gravestones out of a vague curiosity or just to pass the time?”

“Yes.”

“And you calculate from the dates of birth and death how old each of these people was, so you can compare it with your own age?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s just like that. If they’re younger, it’s terrifying. If they’re the same age, well, that’s just rubbing your face right in it, isn’t it? So, that’s terrifying. If they’re older, then that’s . . .”

“Terrifying?”

“That’s right. If they were forty-two, say, you think, that’s just five years. Five more years—can I really achieve all the things I want to in just
five more years
? Considering I’ve been trying to achieve them for thirty-seven years now and I’ve got nowhere . . . I did some more work on my book last night, by the way.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He let his head drop, as if this were explanation enough.

“Ahh. When
I
open the paper I always go straight to the personals.”

“What for?”

“They’re fascinating. Addictive, even. I’ve been studying them recently, and it’s another world—all these people agonizing over each word of the printed sound bite they have in which to define themselves utterly: who they are, why they’re there, what they’re hoping for. ‘Thirty-four-year-old single mum, five foot four, likes reading, keep-fit, and Motown. Been hurt before, now seeking caring prince, 25–42.’ Tiny, two-sentence novels with the last few pages missing.”

Hugh grimaced, scrunched up his plastic cup, and lobbed it into the waste bin.

“Sounds depressing to me.”

“Well, I can see how you’d think that—their not being dead and everything. In fact”—I nodded to myself—“they’re the true opposite of being dead.”

“Aye, I bet Sara often walks in when you’re scouring them and says, ‘Tom! Going through the personals, eh? How delightfully life-affirming of you!’ ”

As it happens, I hadn’t mentioned my newly discovered penchant for the personal pages to Sara; it just hadn’t come up. I wasn’t hiding it, you understand, I simply flipped to another page if she walked in so that she didn’t misconstrue.

“Sara finds them intriguing too, actually, Hugh.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
really
. Anyway, never mind that. Have you sorted out this commission thing?”

“I told you, as soon as I know anything definite, I’ll give Amy a ring.”

“When will you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“When will you know when you’ll know?”

“My God, you’re annoying. Even for an author. Look, I’m seeing the people today. If it goes well, I’ll put Amy onto it for you right away.”

“And if not today?”

“Then I’ll escape out through the kitchens dressed as an old Mexican woman and you’ll never find me.”

He clearly wasn’t going to be bullied into giving up any information (don’t you just
hate
people who are discreet?), so I reminded him about Sara’s videotape and then went for an aimless wander around town. It was a warm, spring day, and the streets were abubble with the usual mix of hawkers, tourists, and homeless people. I collected fifteen flyers—tours, events,
Incredible!
and/or
Insane!
offers on new mobile phones. I didn’t intend to follow up a single one of these things, of course, but I like to give the people handing them out a sense of achievement. I’m sure it must be spirit-crushing to stand in the middle of the pavement all day, a friendly smile fatiguing your face, trying to give out bits of paper to people who either refuse your offer contemptuously or take the thing only to scrunch it up and hurl it away four steps later. I always take the flyers. I like to think that it brings a little joy into the lives of the people distributing the things; they get home—weary, cold, and reeking of traffic fumes—numbly cast their corporate-logoed jacket onto a chair, but then remember me and, with a smile, say to their partner, “Today . . . I made a difference.”