Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women (8 page)

Reading between the email’s two pages of lines, I was able to find some cause for hope, too. There was a point, when complaining about Alex, and also the blokes she’d been seeing when she was in Paris, that she said she wished she could find someone nice. Then, just seven paragraphs down, she mentioned how nice I was to listen to her ranting. My plan to be the nice guy hovering next to the bastard might be working.

I spent a while imagining a time when, after I’d said something insightful but tough to hear about her relationship with her mother, Delphine would go to slap me, but instead I’d kiss her and we’d throw ourselves down on the dining table, scattering dinner plates everywhere.

If things worked out the way I planned we were going to spend a lot of time and money in the Ikea chinaware section.

Finally, Rob’s email was a little easier to digest and dissect, containing, as it did, just the one word.

Pub?

The Rising Sun pub in Covent Garden was a proper old-fashioned English boozer with lots of Victorian characteristics, including a fondness for Tattooed Ladies. It was busier than I expected for a January Monday, and at first I couldn’t find Rob as I scanned the room, but a booming ‘HA!’ from a cubbyhole in the corner alerted me to his presence amongst a group of achingly trendy-looking young people who looked as if they made wholesale changes to their wardrobes on a weekly basis, depending on what was in
The Guardian
fashion pages. I sidled over to them, catching Rob’s eye as I hovered by the table.

‘Hey, sport!’ he declared loudly upon seeing me. ‘Everybody, this is my old buddy Dan. Dan, this is everybody. We’re celebrating all being geniuses. Now let me scooch out to the bar. Who needs anything?’

Rob squeezed his way out from his seat past a couple of guys engrossed in an intense discussion over their mobile phones, shuffling between the table and their legs, which were even skinnier than the ties they were wearing. He gave me a big bear hug and a slap on the back as we headed to the bar.

‘Thank Christ you made it, buddy. I thought I was going to be trapped in there all night. Young people today… I swear at one point I saw two of them sitting next to each other Tweeting amongst themselves. Now what can my expense account get you?’

We ordered a couple of obscurely European lagers and, after sending some crisps over to the kids’ table, settled in at the bar.

‘So how come the drinking on a school night?’ I asked.

‘Big account landed today. Nobody really up for it but it’s virtually compulsory when that happens, everybody swaggering about the office like they’re from
Mad Men
. Having said that, after a couple of mid-afternoon sharpeners I’ve been getting in the mood, but, God, not for a works drink. Then I figured it’d be a perfect
opportunity to get you some last-minute coaching.’

‘Last-minute coaching?’

‘For Thursday.’

‘For Thursday?’

‘For Thursday,’ confirmed Rob. ‘That gets tricky to say after a couple of cocktails — it’s the fuh and the thuh in close proximity…’

‘So what is it that’s happening on Fursd… Thursday?

‘What’s Hannah told you?’

‘I have to be ready for seven p.m. in my new outfit, and it’s going to be exciting.’

‘Well, she’s absolutely right as usual. Thursday is going to be exciting. We’re jump-starting this dating project after last Friday’s stall. You remember, when I saved your life?’

‘Of course I remember. It was three bloody days ago. And you didn’t save my life! I just, needed a cough. So what’s this Thursd—?’

‘Ah, how soon they forget. But we heroes don’t do it for the recognition. Now drink up, and have a stretch. The exercise is about to begin.’

‘But what’s the exercise for?’

‘For Thursday.’

‘What. Is. Happening. ON THURSDAY?’

‘Jeez, sport, keep calm. You don’t want to be getting all aggravated like that. Especially not on Thursday.’

‘ARRGH!’

‘All right, all right, take it easy,’ said Rob, holding his hands up. ‘My goodness, you’d think you were the first person ever to be sent on a blind date after your best pal has pretended to be you on the phone to arrange a drink out with a stranger who his wife had chatted up on an online dating website. On a Thursday.’

I stood there for a second, going over what Rob had just said to try and get it clear in my head — and to calm myself down before I hit him over the head with a frying pan for getting me stuck in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine.

‘Hannah’s been chatting women up on a website?’

‘I know. Pretty cool in a pervy way if you don’t think about it too much.’

‘Pretending to be me.’

‘Yeah, that’s when I found thinking about it got a bit icky.’

‘I knew you were setting up a profile but shouldn’t I be the one speaking to people?’

‘We thought about that, but once the ad went up the lines got red-hot, and you had loads of emails, so we needed to keep the momentum going.’

‘I could’ve done that,’ I protested.

‘We’ve seen how long it takes you to send a text message if you’re trying to be cool. We couldn’t risk these hotties getting menopausal while they waited for you to complete twelve hundred drafts of a three-line email.’

‘But there were a lot of responses?’

‘Oh, yeah, yeah, loads. Of course, most of them were for offers of mail-order brides but we think there’s still a bit of time before we go down that route. How is your grasp of Russian, by the way?’

‘But there was
somebody
not just looking for an EU passport?’

‘Oh, we made you sound quite the catch. Well, Hannah did. I was mainly looking at videos of The Muppets on YouTube. But there was somebody online at the same time as us, you, whatever, and yesterday evening we were messaging back and forth. She’s cute, and doesn’t use too many exclamation marks. Y’know, for a girl.’

Despite my reservations about this whole set-up, hearing there was someone cute interested in me sent a tingle down my spine. I know, I sound like a teenager getting an anonymous love note, but, let’s face it, who’s ever really moved on that much from that?

‘So we were chatting about all sorts of things, biscuits and football and whatever.’

‘That’s why Hannah was asking…’

‘Yeah, we had to wing it a bit. What were your answers?’

‘Always lived in London, dark chocolate digestives, and Queens Park Rangers.’

‘Right, well on Thursday you’re switching your allegiance to West Bromwich Albion — it was a question out of the blue; we panicked — and you love Jaffa Cakes. You might also need to do a bit of research into spending summers in Somerset in the mid-eighties. I told Hannah she was getting your life mixed up with
Cider with Rosie
.’

‘You do know a Jaffa Cake isn’t even a…’

‘Isn’t a biscuit, yes, we know. Everyone knows. It can be a topic of conversation if things get desperate on the night.’

‘And you’ve spoken to her?’

‘Yeah, bit of a sexy voice too, a little husky.’

‘So now she’s going to be expecting me to sound like you! Your voice is about an octave lower than mine, and you’re about four inches taller than me.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t worry, sport, I was crouching down while I was on the phone. And I pretended I had a cold and did a great impression of you — “Ooh, I’m Dan, let me sympathise with all your self-obsessed problems and troubles with men and maybe, one day, if you’re not busy and it isn’t a violation of your sensitivities, I could slip you one around the back of your local.”‘

‘This is ludicrous! What if she’s great? What if it works out? When am I supposed to tell her everything she knows about me is built on a foundation of lies and deceit?’

‘I think the wedding night is the traditional time for that.’

‘I can’t go. I won’t go. It’s demeaning.’

Rob said nothing; he stood there and played with his mobile before turning the touch screen so I could see the personals ad photo he’d been looking up.

‘So I reckon West Brom have got a chance of a good cup run this year,’ I said to him in my best West Midlands accent. ‘Drinks at seven on Thursday, you say?’

7.01p.m. on Thursday and I was sitting in the bar at a restaurant/nightclub just off Haymarket sipping, very slowly, a Brazilian lager and nervously nibbling the complimentary peanuts that apparently made it all right for them to charge six quid for a half-pint in a bottle. The bar PA was playing tunes to try and capture that atmosphere of being out for an exciting night of drinking, dancing, and hey maybe even romancing, but was struggling to overcome the fact that in the lounge it was just a couple of gift-shop-bag-laden tourists and me, suppressing the urge to do a runner.

As I sat and waited I was trying my best not to dip into my coat pocket to do one last bit of revision on my index cards. I’d written down all the information I’d got from Rob and Hannah on what ‘I’d’ already told the twenty-eight-year-old healthcare professional I was meeting, and what she had told ‘me’ about herself. I ran over a few essential facts in my head: Rachel — with one a — would be sporting what Hannah had informed me was a classic blonde pixie-cut hairdo, and, if her pictures were anything to go by, something very this season. However I was advised to not act as if I knew too much about this area, as it might suggest that there was more than some particularly ‘on-trend’ clothes in my closet — a simple ‘you look great’ would suffice.

I was reminded to try and make my job sound more interesting and important than I usually do. Apparently I’d already told her that I’m helping new, environmentally sustainable alternatives to mainstream non-alcoholic beverages get off the ground. This had been well-received. I thought it made me sound like an arsehole, but was trying not to be negative. It was time, I had been reminded, for SuperDan after all.

I reassured myself I’d found the best place to wait for Rachel’s arrival. From the stool I’d picked I could see the door in my peripheral vision, and also more clearly by looking in the mirror behind the shelves of spirits. I’d have a ten-second warning for when I’d need my best spontaneous smile. I also knew my way to the Gents from this spot, so I didn’t have to risk getting lost later, making awkward passes back and forth past Rachel while trying to find the bloody things. All of this had been part of my meticulous research. After leaving the pub on Monday night, Rob and I had come here to scope out the joint and sort out all these fine details that were so important, but so often overlooked in the dating world. At least that was what I’d told him after four pints and he, being several drinks ahead, had agreed with me.

My foot jiggled nervously and my mouth kept getting dry. This was going to be an official date. Not just a boy and girl hanging out together as mates prior to nervy declarations of feelings more than friendship. Not an awkward drink and movie that was the only polite thing to do after copping off with someone at a party. Not a clumsy throwing together of two single folk at a dinner party for a gang of mutual friends. A Proper Date. Two people who didn’t know each other, but were willing to consider that they might be romantically compatible and who were getting together in the belief that, if it all went well, they could be — they could possibly be — the loves of each other’s lives.

I might have been over-thinking this a bit, but it was my first Proper Date since…well, actually, it was my first.

Was that lack of experience unusual these days? Had a dating culture transferred from the US to UK via their TV shows? The only people I’d really had to ask were the Harrisons, and they’d got together the old-fashioned way. Rob seemed to think the young women in his office were open to taking more chances with strangers, but would share all the details with everyone they knew on Facebook the next day. Hannah filled me in on the etiquette she’d learned from watching the sitcom
How I Met Your Mother
. Neither of them was much help, to be honest.

I looked at the clock on my phone again and saw it was now precisely five minutes since the text came in saying she would be arriving in five minutes. I thought about sending a text back saying ‘it’s too late the deal’s off, you’ve just missed the night of your life sweetcheeks’, and then scarpering, but settled for checking if she’d tried to get in touch again from her gridlocked bus.

‘Hello, are you Dan?’

The one flaw in my plan to covertly spot Rachel coming in using tricks with mirrors was that it did involve me remembering not to take my eyes off them to gawp at my phone for minutes at a stretch.

‘Hi,’ I said enthusiastically as I jumped to my feet and she introduced herself. I paused for a moment, held out my hand for hers and leant in for the accompanying peck on one cheek. I was wary of any physical contact with strangers after my last attempt with Niamh, so Rob had had to assure me that I wasn’t living in Saudi Arabia, and in a dating situation this would be a perfectly normal greeting. I just had to remember not to accompany it with a desperate lunge, or tongues, and make sure the recipient was not physically incapacitated by a half-removed winter coat.

‘You look great,’ I said, following the opening script prepared for me.

‘Really?’ she said, smiling and smoothing down her skirt. ‘Thank you.’

It was at this point that I actually thought to have a look at what she was wearing, rather than just say nice things about it. I was relieved to see I’d been right: Rachel looked gorgeous. The photos from her profile had, if anything, undersold her looks. Above a delicate nose, just lightly sprinkled with a hint of freckles, the sparkle of her huge blue eyes was showcased by the blackest of eyelashes. I felt a small surge of rat-pack swagger as I realised my date reminded me of Mia Farrow when she’d been stepping out with Sinatra.

‘Just figuring out how your phone works?’ she asked as she pulled up a seat.

‘Just checking it was still working. It gets a bit temperamental. I really should get a new one.’

‘I thought you’d had to buy a new one, after it was stolen on Monday?’

I kicked myself for not having checked those damned index cards one last time. To address the problem that Rachel thought Rob was me, and his mobile number, which they’d been speaking on, was mine, Hannah and Rob emailed Rachel to tell her that my phone had been nicked from the gym while I was taking a class, and I had a new phone and number — mine.

‘Of course, yes, it’s new,’ I stumbled, covering as best I could, ‘but you know how quickly technology moves these days. Out of date by the time they put it in a bag for you.’

‘It’s too bad the robbers got away, but it was very brave of you to give chase anyway.’

‘Give chase?’ I asked. Sod learning the index cards, this was something that hadn’t been mentioned by my dating interlocutors.

‘I imagine if you hadn’t just finished the advanced Tai Chi class you’d have caught up with them before they disappeared into the warren of back streets.’

‘It’s a physically demanding discipline,’ I agreed, while making a mental note to karate chop Rob for making stuff up. ‘Sometimes I’m moving so slowly it almost looks like I’m not doing it at all.’

‘It’s a shame because catching them would have provided a chance to get the poor unfortunates the help and support they obviously need.’

My heckles rose a bit as I thought about the toerags who nicked my phone getting off with a hug and a prescription for extra methadone. Until I remembered that they were imaginary.

‘And you seem to have got over your cold really quickly,’ Rachel added.

Ah, yes, the cold. I knew about this. It was the one that was responsible for changing my voice from a booming baritone on Monday to an increasingly strangled tenor on a Thursday.

‘That? Oh, yes, vanished. Almost miraculously.’

‘It may seem miraculous to you, but I told you the Echinacea powder and figwort and bark tea would have you right as rain instantly. Much better than those drug company “cures” that keep your energy low so you have to keep buying them.’

‘And it was so moreish!’

We sat there looking at each other for a few awkward moments, smiling and nodding. I was kind of transfixed by a face that didn’t seem to match figwort and conspiracy theories. Rachel looked down and absently ran a finger back and forth on the bar in front of her.

‘Sorry, where are my manners — would you like a drink?’

‘I don’t suppose they have ylang-ylang-infused green tea blends here, do they?’

‘I’ll ask,’ I said.

The barman standing across from us had overheard us and looked at me with a smirk, before shaking his head no.

‘A shame,’ Rachel told the barman. ‘They’re getting very popular and effective for providing a feeling of centred well-being. I’ll have an organic pineapple juice with freshly squeezed lime with ice, but only if the ice is from sustainably distilled water.’

‘And make sure it’s fair-trade,’ I barked, feeling as if I ought to be adding something. The barman strolled off to surreptitiously pour some Rose’s lime cordial into a glass of Britvic before picking up an ice cube to examine it, shrugging and dropping it in the glass.

‘Alcohol is a real obstacle to aligning the body’s centres of spiritual wellness,’ she said, turning back to me, ‘but we all have our weaknesses, I suppose.’

I nodded my head understandingly, and took a big swig of my chakra-sapping beer.

‘So have you ever tried urine therapy?’

The barman gave me a dirty look as a mouthful of my drink was sprayed across the bar he’d just wiped clean in front of me.

‘It’s not a great lager, but honestly it’s not that bad.’

‘Yes, that’s funny,’ she said, smiling, while upping the eye contact from earnest to intense momentarily. Her eyes really were dazzling, but I couldn’t hold her gaze, afraid she’d see into the shallows of my soul and find it wanting.

‘I was asking because I’ve just been reading a book, and was thinking it might be something I could add to my practice,’ she continued.

‘You’re a healthcare professional, right?’ I asked, slightly confused and wondering if the NHS had come up with a great new scheme to keep malingerers out of GP surgeries.

‘I prefer the term natural life enhancement therapist, but, in conventional terms, I suppose you could say that. I offer light therapy, reiki, energy-field analysis…’

The intense eye contact went up another level, and I shifted uncomfortably on my seat as I felt her undressing my aura with her eyes. While I tried to count the freckles on her nose, I told myself the great thing about meeting new people was you learnt about new things.

Things that, if you weren’t being open-minded and non-judgmental, you might have dismissed as loony quackery of the first degree.

‘So, uh, how did you get into that sort of…healing?’ I asked.

‘It’s the usual story, I suppose,’ she said. ‘When I was a child I was a sickly little thing. Conventional medicine didn’t really help at all. My parents — Dad was a medical research professor, Mum a surgeon, very successful — kept sending me off by myself to be looked at by all these different doctors, all supposedly at the top of their field. But all they did was attach a load of labels to me, that I was asthmatic, that I had nut and wheat allergies, was lactose intolerant… None of the treatments they prescribed did me any good and I was still called Rachel Fartypants at school.’

There you are, I thought to myself, there’s a person under there, vulnerable and scared just like everyone else.

‘Then when I was a teenager I discovered for myself the conspiracies at the centre of drug-centred treatment, and
after catching onto reflexology and the power of crystals I’ve not had a day’s ill health.’

Oooookayyyy, I thought, maybe not quite like everybody else.

Rachel went on to tell me how everything I knew about conventional medicine was wrong, that the conditions that had been assigned to her were based on lies. I mumbled incoherent platitudes about how it was all OK as long as youhad your health, and tried to shift the conversation onto less controversial topics. But even this seemed impossible.

I tried biscuits, as we’d already chatted about biscuits. Turned out she thought there was a clear link between your favourite biscuit and areas of spiritual emptiness. My choice of Jaffa Cake pointed to a fundamental disconnect between my life in the city and the simpler, purer life of the humble fruit picker. It also suggested that I was a Gemini — annoyingly, that bit was right. She then told me it was a cake, not a biscuit.

I tried talking about football. She was currently approaching every major club in London to offer her services as a colour therapist, and thought teams could be much more effective if they let each individual player wear a coloured shirt that enhanced their particular molecular vibrations. It was around the point that she was explaining that Wayne Rooney would be happier if he was allowed to wear a kit in peach that I gave up on the evening.

She asked me about my job, and if I was really working in research into the benefits of coca leaves and other natural ingredients. I told her I mainly tried to find out how much refined sugar you’d have to add to a drink before people would be willing to buy a can of fizzy banana-flavoured water. She asked about my hobbies; I said I watched television. Rachel wouldn’t even have one in her house as apparently the radiation was enough to make even the best feng shui worthless. ‘Not that most people who watch the cursed thing would have the spiritual intelligence to understand that,’ she explained.

I said I guessed she hadn’t seen what was supposed to be happening in
EastEnders
this week.

She said she had an intuition I might be a great candidate for the experience of reliving the moment of delivery into the world through rebirthing. There was a bit of a lull then, mercifully broken as she got up to go to the toilet. As soon as she was out of view, I whipped my phone out, and stabbed the speed dial for Rob and Hannah.

‘Ahoy-hoy,’ Rob answered.

‘What have you done to me? What have you done?’

‘Hey, sport! How are things going? However it is, it’s better than being at home watching soap operas, right?’

‘Did you know what kind of loon she is before you sent me out here?’

‘You’re not getting on with some of the spiritual bollocks, then?’