Material Girl (43 page)

Ben and I stand a couple of feet away from each other appraising a series of green wooden signs:

Meet the Monkeys – Walk Through: 2 p.m
.

Peckish Penguins!: 11 p.m. and 3 p.m
.

Lively Spiders!: 1 p.m
.

Discover Reptiles: 11.15 a.m
.

Ben has his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. He got hot on the tube and peeled off his sweatshirt and tied it around his waist, to reveal a T-shirt that reads, ‘
No I don’t want F*cking Fries with that!
’ in yellow, on red. It has an asterisk where the ‘U’ in fucking should be. It seems to me that if you are going to wear that kind of T-shirt you shouldn’t be afraid to spell ‘fucking’ correctly …

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asks, eyeing up the map on the pamphlet in his hand. He looks uncomfortable. I look up. The sky is overcast and it is threatening to rain and I have worn open-toed brown sandals to London Zoo. Both of my big toes are grubby already. I am wearing wide-legged jeans that are rolled up around my ankles, and a
yellow T-shirt and a black V-neck jumper over it. My hair is pulled back in a low, loose ponytail and I’m wearing diamond specks in my ears, and a pink clear bangle around my wrist.

‘I’m not sure really,’ I say, reading the signs again for inspiration. Where would be a good place to talk and relax? I ask myself. ‘Not the reptiles,’ I tell him.

‘We could just wander,’ he says, aimlessly.

‘Why don’t we follow the arrow?’ I suggest, pointing at the green line of paint on the concrete below us.

Ben reads his map aloud: ‘Follow the green arrow and it will lead you all around the zoo, showing you the direction you are supposed to be moving in.’

‘Where’s that been hiding my whole life?’ I say to myself.

‘Tell me about it – we could have done with it at the tube station!’ Ben adds. I made us walk five hundred yards in the wrong direction from Baker Street before conceding that we were heading the wrong way.

‘Then that’s sorted.’ I ignore him. ‘Let’s go this way.’

The zoo is one giant packed lunch. Kids scream and roll towards and around my feet like footballs that I try to dodge and not fall over. We walk through a tunnel with replica caveman prints on the walls but none of the children are paying much attention, preferring instead to see who can shout the loudest and make the biggest echo.

We come out of the other side and see more signs. ‘When do you ever get anywhere?’ Ben asks, irritated.

And I think, look who’s talking, but of course I don’t say it.

‘Shall we do the woodland walk? Or the giraffes?’ he asks, following both arrows with his eyes but seeing nothing of any interest, just more bends in the pathways.

‘Oh, let’s just go where we go. Let’s go and see the giraffes. I’ve never seen one before,’ I say.

We walk up an incline, Ben holding his map, and me with my arms crossed against the cold, and in doing so we avoid holding hands like every other couple visiting London Zoo today. As we reach the door to the giraffe house the smell hits me like an evil wall of damp, warped straw-stench!

‘Mother of God!’ I exclaim, thrusting my hand under my nose to smell my moisturiser instead.

‘They are animals, Scarlet,’ Ben says, and strides in, so I hold my breath and follow. I catch up with him while he is reading a sign about somebody called Sir Harry Johnston who discovered the horse/zebra creature standing behind bars in front of us, when Sir Johnston helped save some kidnapped Pygmies.

Ben carries on reading the sign and I look at the horse/zebra, who is picking at hay. I can’t get over the cages, how small they seem for fully grown animals that are supposed to run and graze and splash about in watering holes.

‘They look so hemmed in,’ I say quietly.

‘It’s a zoo, Scarlet, what did you expect? They don’t know any better.’

‘They just look really claustrophobic. Can you imagine feeling that trapped and isolated?’ I ask, and then wish I hadn’t when Ben turns and gives me a strange look, as if I had said something completely different.

‘Is that how you feel, Ben?’ I ask, suddenly brave enough for me and the poor horse/zebra.

‘What?’ he asks, irritated.

‘Do I cage you in?’ I persist, standing in front of him, looking up at him, waiting for him to look back.

He sighs.

‘Do I?’ I ask.

‘Oh God, Scarlet, I don’t know, maybe?’ he replies.

A row of children dash through the door, piling into us with a scream, and shouting ‘Hello!’ at the poor horse/zebra, who turns away from the din. ‘Turn around,’ they scream
at it, banging on the railings, but it refuses and I am glad.

Ben walks off and I follow.

There are two giraffes standing further down in their own enclosure. They are huge, much bigger than I was expecting. I watch them as they move around their space together, leaning on each other’s neck with obvious affection, and stroking each other. When they do this there is an audible ‘ah’ from the crowd, and people whip our their mobile phones, holding them aloft, snapping away. Then everyone looks back down for five minutes as they send their various text messages, and the giraffes turn away, ignored.

‘They are definitely a couple,’ I say, ‘they are obviously in love.’

Ben has found another sign to read, and shouts over his shoulder at me, ‘Only if they’re lesbians. They are two girls: Crackers and Dawn. Been together years, they are both twenty-seven, retired, and they’ve had nine kids between them.’

‘Goodness,’ I exclaim, looking back at them. They certainly seem close.

‘It’s still love,’ I tell him as he sits down on a bench and leans back against the wall. I sit next to him and watch Dawn and Crackers stroking each other’s neck with the brush of hair on their backs.

‘It’s like you and Helen,’ Ben says with a sneer.

‘Or you and Iggy, and the good-looking one is Iggy,’ I say.

We smirk at each other.

Ben reaches behind him and pulls a leaflet off the wall and casts his eye over it. ‘Do you want this? It’s about adopting an animal. It would be sweet for your nephews, maybe?’ He offers it to me as we stand up.

‘Yes, actually. Thank you.’

He shrugs and smiles.

As we wander back along the path, following the green
arrow, I feel my nerve slipping away. There is noise all around us but we are in silence as it starts to spit rain.

‘Insect house?’ he asks, looking for cover.

‘I suppose!’ I say, and we run in as the rain turns dramatically to hail and a thousand others follow us inside.

We inch through the noise and cramped space, past windows that apparently hold different types of beetle. German tourists depressed by the hailstones have their faces pressed up against the glass walls on the inside, steaming it up as they look out at the puddles forming on the paving stones.

‘What if it wipes away the green arrow?’ I ask, mildly alarmed.

‘I think they’ve probably thought of that, Scarlet, I imagine it’s waterproof.’

‘Of course,’ I say. I only ever seem to say the really stupid things when Ben is around. I wonder if I do it subconsciously – I KNOW they wouldn’t have painted the arrow on the ground in, say, watercolour, but something makes me blurt out the beginnings of a strange scenario in my head, where the arrow suddenly disappears and the hoards emerge from the insect house and a riot breaks out at London Zoo because nobody knows where they are supposed to go next. I never share the full fanciful story with Ben, just the starting point that, on its own, makes me simply sound like an idiot. At the same time it makes him sound like the adult, the grown-up, the protector. I wonder if I do it because I love him, and I want him to feel important.

Ben and I are squashed violently together by a crowd surge in front of a pane of glass that shields a whole room of twigs and branches, big enough for a man to stand in because there is one, in what looks like a beekeeper’s outfit. A cricket makes its way up the glass in front of my nose.

The man is holding something behind his back. He looks
over at us all in front of him, and then pulls the sign out and holds it in front of his chest.

In black writing on a yellow board it reads, ‘I love you. Will you marry me?!’

The crowd gasps. I stare at it numbly, and then look up at Ben, confused.

But he is just staring straight ahead at the man with the sign, aghast.

I feel all the faces around us turn west, and I turn with them.

Next to me is a young guy, and he’s down on one knee. A brunette with steamed-up glasses is looking from him to the insect house, and back to him, pointing, her mouth fallen open and tears streaming down her cheeks. The girl nods and says in a voice thick with laughter and tears, ‘I will, I will, I will!’

The young guy jumps up and pushes a ring onto her finger, and they kiss passionately, right next to us.

There is a huge cheer from the assembled crowd, from everybody but Ben and I.

The hailstones stop suddenly, and sunshine bursts through the glass walls from outside, momentarily blinding the German schoolchildren with their noses pressed up against it.

‘Reptile house?’ Ben says to me.

I follow him out.

The air is cool and warm, and my grubby toes get soaked by rain puddles. We reach the reptile house and I spot a big picture of a snake, and shiver.

‘Ben, I don’t want to go in there, you know I’m scared of snakes. How about the tigers instead?’

‘But this will be the best bit!’ he says.

‘You can go in it later, and I’ll sit outside,’ I suggest.

He turns to face it longingly, and then looks back at me.

‘Can we please just go and see the tigers?’ I ask, feeling my courage return. I need to start the conversation now, or perhaps never.

Ben nods and follows me down the path, and I feel myself start to shake.

‘They keep yawning,’ Ben says, as we stare at two tigers ambling about behind the glass looking like they’ve been given tranquiliser shots.

‘They look really bored.’ He consults his array of pamphlets hoping that one of them will be able to tell him why the tigers are so lethargic.

‘Poor things, I hope they were born in captivity, and this is all they have ever known,’ I say.

‘Why?’ Ben asks, not looking up.

‘So they don’t know what they are missing out on,’ I answer, but think again. I bet they still know that something isn’t right even if they were born in a glass box, and even if this is the only experience of life they’ve ever known. They must have a sneaking suspicion, at least, that there is something else out there.

Ben and I stand and watch them in silence.

I could just say it – ‘We should break up’ – but I can’t get the words out.

A couple our age with a baby move and stand next to us. The dad is holding the little girl, who is wearing an all-in-one snowsuit and looks about eighteen months old.

‘How does a tiger go?’ the daddy asks her.

‘Grrrr,’ she says. The mum looks on, holding the pram upright, loaded down as it is with bags of baby wipes and juice cartons.

‘But how does a crocodile go?’ the daddy asks her.

‘Snap!’ she screams, clapping her hands together.

‘And what does the crocodile eat for lunch, Megan?’ he asks her, widening his eyes.

‘Megan!’ She screams and laughs.

Ben and I are both laughing as well, and the dad gives us a smile. It makes me feel self-conscious and I look at Ben. We catch each other’s eye and the laughing stops. Ben ambles away.

‘The penguin pool was designed by the Russian émigré Berthold Lubetkin in 1934. He also designed Highpoint apartment building in Highgate, one of the highest points in greater London,’ Ben says. ‘Its brand of modernism was unusually elegant and playful at the time, and is a reminder of how innovative the style must have looked when it first appeared.’

We sit opposite the penguin house on a bench. The penguins all follow each other around the pool, sliding up and down interlocking ramps.

‘You see, I want that,’ I say to Ben.

‘A penguin?’ he asks, confused.

‘No. Megan. “
What does a crocodile eat?
” At least, I want that to be an option,’ I say, but staring straight ahead because I can’t look at him. My hands shake and my mouth dries up. Ben leans forwards and rests his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands.

After half a minute’s silence, he says, ‘What do you want me to say, Scarlet?’

‘What you feel,’ I reply.

‘I don’t know … I just … I don’t know.’ He shakes his head.

I gulp, and he hears it and looks up.

‘Do you love me?’ I ask.

He stares at me sadly. ‘No.’

‘Why are you ignoring that?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘Why did you move in with me?’

‘Because … you asked, and I thought you’d get angry if I didn’t.’ He talks to his open palms in front of him.