Boyfriend in a Dress (18 page)

Dale is there already, seated at our table. He doesn’t even say hello, he just kind of stands up, and sits down, and smiles a lazy smile.

My nerves vanish suddenly, I just feel that this is how we should do it, slip straight back into it. He is wearing the same suit I have seen a thousand times in college, perched on a chair with feet on a desk. I suddenly realize that Dale and I share something completely – we share memories of that year. It happened, we can’t erase it. I was there and so was he, no matter what happens, at some point in his life he’ll remember a conversation, or a time when I was there. We share a year of our lives, while trying to share nothing at all.

‘Dale,’ I raise my eyebrows, ‘you’ve had that suit cleaned since the last time I saw you, I swear!’

‘December ’99,’ he says, smiling.

‘Well, we all celebrated the millennium in different ways, I guess.’ I sit, and Dale sits down a moment later.

My phone rings as Dale opens his mouth to speak, and I grimace and apologize. I grab at it to turn it off – it is only José – but am secretly pleased that he knows I am needed somewhere, by someone at the end of the line.

‘That’s a m-o-b-i-l-e phone,’ I enunciate the letters slowly. ‘You can walk and talk and everything.’

‘And there was I thinking it was one of those new fangled transistor radios.’

‘No.’ I shake my head at his mock stupidity. I don’t know what to say next. I cough uncomfortably and glance around the room. Dale just smiles knowingly at me, and I feel transparent.

‘Well, what are you doing in London?’ I ask him, to stop this moment seeming so intimate, to stop us believing we can read each other’s minds.

He takes a breath, a cough, like I’ve spoiled something, and replies, ‘I always knew I’d come … and now the kids are with their mother …’

I gasp slightly, a swift intake of breath. He knew that would floor me. I think this whole conversation, this whole meeting, may have been designed to make me feel as uncomfortable as possible. I am floored.

I realize now that I expected Dale to be slicked-back hair and middle-aged bohemia, I thought he wouldn’t have moved on somehow, would have stayed the same as I had, but he’s had a life, had kids, been married, and I have to ask.

‘You’re married? What fool accepted that job?’ I realize that my sarcasm is sounding cruel, and that I also meant to be slightly cruel – that I am jealous, jealous that he didn’t hold out for me, when quite clearly I would never have said yes, but nonetheless. I see a flicker of hurt in his eyes, and feel bad.

‘Anybody I know?’ I say quickly to brush over my last comment.

He looks down, and slightly ashamed, as if that one line has penetrated the armour, and I realize what he has done. He is just as cruel.

We both know he’s going to say her name before he does, and we both know the massive connotations of him saying
it to me, and yet he is brave, and doesn’t deny it, and then he says,

‘Joleen.’ With a gesture of his hands he shrugs off the fact that he did it, while holding his hands up to every guilty feeling encompassed in doing it. He wrecked her life, knowingly, in a weak self-pitying moment of ‘I do’.

I take a sip of my drink, and look around, and try and disguise the look in my eyes, be it pity or contempt or jealousy.

‘She got pregnant. I couldn’t leave her. She was carrying my baby.’

‘Oh my God, Dale, you don’t have to explain it to me – Jesus, I’m sure it was great – I’m sure you were very in love.’ I try desperately to pretend that I think it’s fine that he married her, and that he must have loved her. And that things must have changed dramatically after I left.

‘It wasn’t like that – if she hadn’t been pregnant …’ He looks down again, and pushes his cutlery around.

‘If she hadn’t been pregnant … you wouldn’t have got married?’ I ask, I don’t know why. I don’t have to voice it; it’s obvious.

‘Well …’ Within minutes we appear to have crash landed into a nightmare of a conversation, and I am making assumptions about a man and a life I have no right to make, but yet I feel I am on the money here, and that this is, even partly, the reason he came, and he called. He wanted this conversation to happen. It’s like I’m the person who can absolve him. And him me.

‘But what about your girlfriend, the one when I left, the one who tried to commit suicide – I thought you were going to try and sort that out.’

‘She died the month you left.’

‘But I thought she didn’t kill herself.’ I am shocked again. Somebody’s life ended and it didn’t even affect me – I thought she had carried on living like the rest of us.

‘You left, you wouldn’t know,’ Dale says, almost an accusation.

I need to wring the emotion out of this conversation – we’ll either be killing each other or fucking on the table in the next five minutes if this keeps up. We need to talk about something less ‘fraught’. Something non-violent, non-sexual, non-explosive. ‘So how many kids?’ I ask with a smile, praying they are all alive and well.

‘Two.’ He looks at me seriously – he wanted to carry on the killing or fucking conversation.

‘Two kids? That’s impressive, for a man of your diminished stature at least.’

He ignores my attempt to lighten the conversation; Dale has serious things in mind. He doesn’t want a lunchtime of sarcasm that brushes the surface, he wants to face things, and get his penance.

I don’t know what he expects to come of this. I don’t know how he thinks this will make things better. I’d rather have a conversation about air travel, about the sights he’s seen. I check my watch, I have been sitting here for fifteen minutes and it seems like hours. I realize nobody has taken our order. I shout ‘Waiter’, at the same time as Dale says, ‘I wanted to see you.’

We are both embarrassed for a moment, and the waiter is at our table before I can acknowledge his outburst. So instead I order a salad, no starter, and Dale does the same. The waiter makes the usual requests about bread and oil and olives and we accept. He leaves us eventually. I dust off the napkin on my lap, and compose myself, and look up at Dale who is looking back at me seriously.

And I realize I can’t say the same thing back. I didn’t want to see him. I just wanted the mess to be cleared up. I wanted to feel better about all the things that had been making me feel lousy for all this time, about feeling bad for a man that
I convinced myself I pity screwed, about the periods I missed from then on. About a decision I made without him, about resenting Charlie for making me feel worse, just by being nice and supportive, thinking it was his of course. I never told Dale. He thinks he is sitting opposite some wisecracking English girl that he developed a crush on for a year, and this whole thing could be so romantic if we could pick up where we left off, now he is done with the first half of his life. He thinks we can find each other now we are older and wiser and all the youthful things that drove us apart aren’t important now. He has romanticized me without even knowing that for nearly every day since I left he has crept into my thoughts as the man who ruined my chance with Charlie, and the man whose child I threw away.

But to look at him: he looks like an old man. Foolish old man dreams.

‘I’m a teacher,’ he says. ‘Poetry.’ Out of the blue.

‘I knew it,’ I say. I want him to share himself, if he wants to. I don’t want to burst his dreams, not yet.

‘You and your dark poetic centre,’ I say, and he smiles like I understand him better than anybody. It makes me want to cry.

He was so much older at college, nearly seven years older than me. He should be sorted by now, but his life is falling apart. He’s scared, and he thinks maybe I’m his lifeboat. At least he has his kids.

‘Do you have a picture … of the kids?’

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a bashed-up old wallet, and takes out a photo. A photo of a beach and a holiday. Strange-looking kids. I say they are ‘adorable’.

Our food comes, and time goes on, but nothing is really said now.

Mine isn’t another trauma to add to his list, to add to his sadness. I thought I might tell him everything, dump it all on
him, and make myself feel better, clean my own slate, and not worry about his. But Dale’s slate is too full already.

We order coffee – I have to get back to work.

‘Can I call you?’ he asks suddenly. And I realize that lunch wasn’t about me at all – but about his expectations and his thoughts. I’m sitting here thinking I’ve ended something, and he’s thinking it’s the start of something.

‘Where are you going to call me from? You’re going back to the States aren’t you?’

‘I could come back, after Ireland. I could … rent a flat, you can teach anywhere.’

I should just say no, I should say I’m with Charlie now; for the first time in years, I’m with Charlie again. But I give him my number anyway, and change the last number so it’s wrong. I am a despicable coward. I don’t want to upset him, but in fact I just don’t want him to be upset in front of me. He can be upset later, when he tries to call and realizes I’ve given him the wrong number. I shake my head and close my eyes, trying to discard my weaknesses. I hate myself, still.

He gives me his hotel number as well, and I take it and put it in my wallet. I get up to go so quickly I knock a plate on the floor, and as Dale leans down to pick it up, I back at least three feet away. He looks up to see me backing away, shouting,

‘Have a great time in Scotland – it’s great, I’ll speak to you when you get back, lovely to see you.’ I turn quickly and only glimpse the look of confusion on his face. I leave the restaurant, and look back to see him plugging numbers into his phone. Then he smiles very sadly, and he knows and I know.

I keep having visions of Dale grabbing me from behind and kissing me as I steam back to the office. I just want to phone Charlie. My mobile dies as soon as I try and turn it back on to retrieve his number. I practically run back to work.

I ignore Phil and storm straight into my office, shutting the
door behind me. It’s not only that I can really do this now, go away with Charlie, but I want to do it. I want to run away, play with dolphins, climb mountains, get fucked on a beach on some potent local cocktail of smoke and spirits. I can turn everything around and simultaneously leave everything behind. But I dial Charlie’s mobile and it is dead. I phone his work, and it rings and rings and nobody answers. I hang up and dial again. Charlie doesn’t answer, and neither does his assistant. I slam the phone down and swear, pick up the receiver and hit redial. Phil knocks and sticks his head around the door, and I practically scream ‘not now’, and he swears under his breath and closes the door again.

I hear José shouting outside my office, ‘She will not say not now to me!’ and the door bursts open.

‘What ze fuck is zis?’ he shouts, waving my resignation letter in front of my face.

I slam the phone down again.

‘That’s my resignation, José,’ I say, through clenched teeth. I don’t want to go through it all now, or remind myself that I have done it.

‘I know what it fucking is, I want to know why!’

‘Then why didn’t you ask “why the fuck are you resigning” instead?’

José’s forehead goes a little red, and I can see him trying to keep a lid on what will be a massive Mediterranean storm when it hits. José pulls back one of the two chairs in front of my desk and sits down, crossing his legs, regaining his cool.

‘You cannot resign. It is in your contract.’ He says this seriously – he just doesn’t understand how these things work.

‘José, of course I can resign, don’t be ridiculous. I’m giving you a month’s notice. It’s perfectly legal.’

‘Well zen, I will sue.’ He smiles at me like he has won.

‘Jesus, José, you can’t sue! It’s perfectly legal, I’m allowed to leave if I want to, I don’t owe you my life.’

José changes his tack.

‘What about
Evil Ghost?
All your ’ard work, somebody else will claim the credit.’ He smiles at me, knowing full well he’ll claim it anyway.

‘I really don’t care, José, honestly.’

‘It says ’ere you are going travelling?’

‘Yes. With my boyfriend.’ The three little words stick to my tonsils as they surface, and I practically gurgle them. I am worried. It is needless worry: he is probably just out to lunch, but something knocking at my subconscious tells me things aren’t quite as rosy as I have made out. Trusting him is proving harder than I thought.

‘You ’ave a boyfriend? I did not know.’ José spits at me, abandoning any sense of professionalism, and just insulting me instead.

‘Oh piss off, José, if you have just come in here to be nasty you might as well leave.’

‘I do not believe zis story about travelling. I zink you are going to a competitor. I zink I should clear your desk now.’ He thumps my desk with his fist, but bullying is not going to work today. I try to keep my cool, calm.

‘Fine, do it! Please, be my guest, but you still have to pay me for another month.’

‘For fuck’s sake … We shall see, Nicola, don’t ’old your breath.’ José stalks out and slams the door behind him, and I throw a pack of Post-its on the floor in frustration, my nerves getting the better of me, losing control of a situation that was never going to be controlled.