I wonder if his definition of ‘reasonably attractive’ can encompass a woman with a few stretch marks and a light smattering of cellulite.
‘Would you go out with Nigella?’ I say. Such a good test of a man’s shallowness – can he appreciate a gorgeous woman with a real body.
‘Far too old for me!’ he says.
‘She’s near enough your age, you cheeky git!’
He shrugs.
‘Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’ I say.
‘She’s nice looking. Anyway, looks aren’t everything.’
The maître d’ beckons us over, and as we stand, James reaches under his bar stool and presents me with a bag.
‘I got you something,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I say, shocked. Inside the bag is a large bottle of Aromatherapy Associates Rosemary Bath Oil that he must have bought me in Duty Free, wherever he has been.
‘I know you like rosemary,’ he says. I do? ‘The pasta you ordered at the Italian …’
Bless him, I love the taste of rosemary but I don’t want to smell like a roast lamb. Still, extremely thoughtful and sweet of him.
‘That’s lovely of you, James Stephens. Thank you.’ I kiss him briefly on the mouth and feel his eyes on the back of
me as I walk to the ladies’ room to check whether my ankle has stopped bleeding.
The ankle is fine, but I change tights anyway as I have to take off the old ones to dab a slight blood stain on my foot.
When I return five minutes later, there is a bottle of decent red on the table.
‘One of the chefs at work was telling me that this place is famous for its mince and potatoes,’ I say, looking at the menu.
‘I knew you’d be a good woman to go out with,’ he says, ‘I can’t stand girls who don’t eat.’ Men always say this. It is often bullshit and means ‘I can’t stand girls who don’t eat but neither can I stand girls who show signs of having eaten’. It is invariably the same men who say ‘I like girls who look natural’, but actually mean girls who only wear foundation, cover up, pressed powder, blush, a bit of eye pencil and a lot of mascara.
‘Oh, and save room for The Queen of Puddings, it’s meant to be amazing.’
‘Queen of Puddings, isn’t that your job?’ he says, smiling.
‘I wish, I’m only a junior developer,’ I say.
‘Still, it sounds great. I think it’s brilliant what you do for a living … Queen of Puddings. So you just sit around stuffing your face with cake all day, do you?’
‘There’s a little more to it than that. You have to think
of new concepts, follow market trends, brief suppliers, work out if a product’s manageable in budget, there’s all the microbiotics, health and safety, shelf life, packaging, travel testing …’
‘So you do, you basically get paid to eat cake,’ he clinks his glass against mine in congratulation.
‘Sometimes I bake cakes all day …’
‘You cook at work?’
‘Great job, huh?’ I say.
‘Is that why you don’t paint your nails?’ He makes it sound like I have half a finger missing that he’s been too polite to ask about, but has been dying to know the story behind – did a squirrel bite it off?
‘No,’ I say, tucking my hands away on to my lap. ‘I’m just not always a full hair and make-up kind of girl. I don’t have the time. Why, do you like painted fingernails?’
‘A little red nail polish never goes amiss …’ he says.
‘You really did have your teenage sexual awakening in the 80s,’ I say, shaking my head.
He laughs and fills my glass, then rests his hands on the table. My hands spontaneously float up from my lap to be beside his.
‘God, you don’t see many women out like that anymore,’ says James, as a six-foot, heavily made-up twenty-something in a full-length fur walks in, flanked by a tubby man of around fifty.
‘Bimbos with sugar daddies? London’s full of them!’
‘No, I mean the coat. That’s Russian sable!’ he says admiringly.
‘– I think it’s a bit tacky,’ I say.
‘The coat?’
‘No, them – he looks like he’s paying her by the hour. – How do you know it’s a Russian sable?’
‘The bluish tinge. Do you know that the mating ritual of the Russian sable can last up to eight hours?’ he says, leaning forward, a huge smile breaking across his face.
‘Sounds like Sting … anyway, how do you know all this?’
‘My grandfather was a furrier – Stephanikov Furs, in the East End. Do you like fur?’
‘I don’t like the thought of animals being hurt just for my benefit, but then I eat meat, so … No, I don’t have a problem with fur, not vintage anyway. Sorry, does that make me mean, horrible and heartless?’
‘No, just asking.’
‘Well, if there are any mink jackets lying round your garage that you need a good home for …’
He laughs and orders a couple of vodka shots.
‘Are you trying to get me drunk, Mr Stephens?’ I say.
He raises an eyebrow and grins. ‘So, what’s the best pudding in the world?’ he says.
‘Hot pudding, cold pudding, cake, tart, fool, mousse, flan, trifle – define your terms, please.’
‘Cake,’ he says.
‘Number one: a Jean Clement praline millefeuille, you can only get them in Paris. Number two: my mother’s chocolate and raspberry cream cheesecake – only available in California, and when my mother is in a good mood. And three: Ottolenghi’s apple and sultana cake – Upper Street, any day of the week.’
He beams back at me. ‘You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever dated,’ he says.
‘Why?’ I say.
He shrugs.
‘In a good way?’ I say.
He nods. I feel a little flutter in my chest.
‘What do you actually do, anyway? I mean, I know you sell socks, but very specifically what do you do?’
‘Okay, where do you buy your socks?’
‘M&S.’
‘Why?’
‘Good quality.’
‘Why else?’
‘The right amount of stretch.’
‘Why else?’
‘No other reason. I’m not that into socks. Sorry.’
‘Never apologise. What about tights?’
‘M&S, same reasons. Do you sell tights too?’ I hope so. I could do with a man who could keep me in tights, the rate I’m going through them tonight …
‘Just socks for now but I’m starting something new in
legwear this summer. Another bottle of red?’ He smiles at me and I can’t help but beam back.
The main course arrives. I realise he still hasn’t told me exactly what he does. This man could be a drug dealer or a pimp for all I know – he has the hustle to be either – but I don’t care because whatever he is, I am bewitched.
We stumble out onto Dean Street to hail a cab. It is freezing and he tucks me inside his coat with him. ‘Come here, you tiny thing.’
On the corner of an alley is a tramp of about sixty. A pink tiara rests on her patchy orange hair. She is wearing a sheepskin coat, a velvet sailor suit that stops mid-calf, and house slippers. When she sees James she points at him and shouts ‘Jackie Boy, you’re a useless cont,’ in a thick Ulster accent.
‘Another one of your ex-fiancées?’ I say, giggling.
He tries not to smile. ‘I told you all beautiful women are mad.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe guys like you make them mad.’
‘Nah, it’s just the way you’re built. Speaking of which, come here.’
I’m already inside his coat with him but he puts both arms around me and kisses me. We stay like this until the tramp lurches towards us and asks James for some change.
I expect him to fob her off like the Tory-boy I suspect he really is, but instead he reaches into his wallet and hands her a £20 note. ‘Buy yourself something to eat, please?’ he says.
I’m more amazed than she is.
‘What?’ he says.
‘Nothing. Generous, that’s all.’
He shrugs. ‘Always been a sucker for a well-turned ankle.’ He laughs and grabs my hand and we walk up to Oxford Street to find a taxi.
‘So, how was the morning after?’ says Laura, when I call her back the following afternoon.
‘Great! We had a fry-up in bed, read the papers, then he left to go to White Hart Lane with Rob,’ I say, surveying the mess of pans, wine glasses and crumbs in my kitchen.
‘And the night before?’
I blush remembering it. We had sex. We had quite a lot of sex, all of it good.
I once dated a gorgeous Italian Jewish lawyer who was tall, funny, kind and spoke five languages. The first (and last) time we slept together, it came to light that he had a rare psychosomatic sexual disorder that meant he had a fit at the point of orgasm.
As Eskimos with ‘snow’, Jews have multiple words for ‘disappointment’. None of these came close to covering off that scenario.
Still, since then, whenever I sleep with someone for the
first time and they don’t nearly swallow their own tongue and go blue, I’m profoundly grateful.
‘It was good, really natural. I like his body, it’s big – it makes me feel small.’
‘How did you leave it with him?’ says Laura.
‘He rang just after he left to say goodbye, he’s off again tomorrow for five days, to Portugal.’
‘Is he going to call you?’
‘Well, he said “you’re not going to forget about me are you?” and I said why don’t you call me from Portugal, and he sort of evaded the question.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Weird, isn’t it?’
‘Do you think there’s another girl?’
‘No.’ That thought hadn’t actually occurred to me. ‘He’s visiting some financiers, definitely. But I feel like he’s project managing me, putting me on ice for a week.’ And I don’t like it.
‘Ah well, it’s early days, isn’t it. Let’s see what happens when he gets back.’
After I put the phone down, I ignore the washing up and go back to lie on my bed. The pillow still smells strongly of James. I should wash this pillowcase today, and these sheets, or I’ll lie here later and miss him.
I’ll miss his body, his strong arms, his broad shoulders. The weight of him. I’ll miss his mouth. Those confident
hands. His head coming to rest in the curve of my neck. His heartbeat finally slowing under my palm….
Who am I kidding – Persil Bio on a 60 isn’t going to wash away those memories. I force myself to get up and make a cup of tea and wash up the pans. The sheets can wait.
It’s nearly 4pm now, so I pop round to the florist in Maida Vale to buy my grandma a bunch of orange tulips, then drive round to her flat in Highgate. I park in the courtyard next to the communal garden. My grandma lived here with my grandpa for thirty-eight of their fifty-five years together. There’s a beautiful teak bench at the back of the garden under an apple tree, bought for them on their ruby wedding anniversary by the residents in the block. The inscription is from The Bible, The Song of Songs: ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’. My grandparents would sit together on this bench on balmy summer nights, one or both of them dozing off against each other’s shoulder.
I do love coming to my grandma’s flat. It reminds me of Saturday afternoons spent with my brother, riding up and down in the lift with its old-fashioned sliding cage door. Of being chased along the red-carpeted corridors by my dad till my grandma would poke her head out of her door, and announce in a deeply serious tone that if we wanted any of her world famous spaghetti with tomato sauce and meatballs, we’d better come quick before my grandpa ate the last mouthful.
I ring the bell and Evie, my grandma’s part-time carer, buzzes me in. ‘She didn’t sleep well,’ she says, opening the door and greeting me with a kiss. Evie is the longest-serving carer my granny has had. My grandma has despatched various Eastern European carers over the last decade for looking miserable or talking too much or too little (‘the stumers’). Evie is perpetually cheery, talks just the right amount and paints my granny’s impressive fingernails purple and jangly like a west London rude-girl.
My grandma is ninety-seven. Her legs don’t work and her boredom has morphed into depression, but her brain and her tongue are razor sharp.
She is sitting in her pale blue wing back chair, staring out of the window towards the Heath, but her face lights up when I walk in.
‘For you,’ I say, handing her the tulips.
‘My favourite!’ she says. ‘Evie! A vase please? Now sit. Have a biscuit,’ she says, pointing at a dozen star-shaped, sugar-dusted biscuits arranged neatly on a red and white Delft plate. I nibble a lemon shortbread even though I hate lemon with sweet things. ‘What’s new then, Sophola? How was that pistachio lamb?’
We’d discussed that dish more than a month ago.
‘Needed longer on a lower heat,’ I say.
‘Always the lowest heat,’ she says, shaking her head.
My foodie genes come from my grandma, who is my dad’s mother, and my mum. My grandma was an excellent
cook before she tired of food in her dotage. Now all she eats is boiling hot soup, stale lemon biscuits and coffee ice cream, washed down with a small whisky of an evening. I inherited her habit of always trying something new, and my mother’s habit of always ordering three times too much of it.
‘So your brother’s making me feel old – a great-grandmother indeed!’
‘It’s so exciting, I can’t wait!’
‘I’m not sure I’ll still be here when the baby arrives.’
‘Oh, stop it. Of course you will.’
‘This is my last winter, I can feel it,’ she shakes her head.
‘Nonsense, you say that every year!’
‘I’m ready to go,’ she says, her shoulders rising and falling slowly. ‘And you? When are you going to stop flitting about?’
‘I’m not ready for all that baby stuff yet.’
‘Of course not, you need to find a decent man first. Is there no one nice at work?’
Raymond Cowell-Trousers in accounts? ‘Not at work, no. But I have met someone who I think you might approve of.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘He’s … he’s very bright. And handsome. Nice and tall.’ I won’t mention his age; I don’t think she’d approve of that.
‘What does he do?’
‘He runs his own company, he sells socks.’
‘Jewish?’ she says, a faint trace of hope in her voice.
‘I think his grandfather was.’ We both know this doesn’t count. ‘East End, furrier.’
‘Your grandfather knew some people in the schmutter trade. What’s this creature’s name?’
‘Stephens. James Stephens, in fact!’
‘Oh dear!’ she raises her hands to her face in mock horror. ‘Don’t be too nice to him! You know how that poem ends …’